This is exactly right. Christianity is not Christianity, it is Paulism. It ceased being Christianity when Paul inserted himself into it and used it as a platform for his thoughts.
It never fails to amaze me how often St. Paul is subjected to scorn for allegedly diluting or unduly fleshing out or just plain "corrupting" Jesus' message. I don't know how someone can read his Letters, those that are genuinely by him and not the Pastorals which are merely attributed to him, and not come away with an appreciation for the depth of his thought, his adoration for Christ and his missionary fervour. Had it not been for Paul, Christianity would likely have died out like other fledgling offshoots of Judaism such as the Essene sect.
Christian mystics see Paul as their hero. As Evelyn Underhill, an early 20th century scholar of Christin mysticism noted:
"...Christian literature begins with a handful of letters written by a mystic; that is to say, with the epistles of St. Paul, the oldest books of the New Testament. Though we might appeal to the Synoptic portrait of Jesus, as our real guarantee for that balanced life of loving communion with God and active charity to men which is the ideal of Christian mysticism - still, the Gospels as we have them are later than St. Paul's career. This means that the earliest documentary witness to Jesus Christ that we possess is the witness of mysticism; and it tell us, not about His earthly life, but about the intense and transfiguring experience of His continued presence, enjoyed by one who had never known Him in the flesh..."
- Evelyn Underhill, The Mystics of the Church (1925)
Even the Gnostics revered him and considered him to be one of their greatest exponents. If you don't believe me just read the Prayer of Paul in the Nag Hammadi corpus or Elaine Pagels works on the matter.
His authentic Letters are the earliest Christian documents that we posses; the sayings and life of Jesus were at that time chiefly passed around orally or through primitive documents such as the hypothetical Q source underlying the synoptic and the Passion narrative and Signs Gospel thought to underpin the Gospel of John's traditions.
Yes, he never knew Jesus personally. His conversion to Christianity rested around a profoundly
personal religious experience - and that's the point, he had direct apprehension of the truths of which Jesus spoke, rather than merely relating them in a mechanical, lifeless fashion. Why on earth one thinks that Jesus would have disapproved of this is beyond me. St. Paul
lived Jesus' message. He could pass it on orally too - he refers to the Last Supper and quotes Jesus in his Letters, in Acts he is described as passing on a saying of Jesus about giving. But he went much further than that.
I think it is judgemental to intimate that his visions are likely untrue. So too then are those of any mystic: since all we have to rely on are their word and the witness of their life.
In 2 Corinthians, he lets slip that his ability, although never having known Jesus, to compose inspired literature and teachings that would become Christian scripture, stemmed from a profound experience in which he lost conscious awareness of both himself and creation, a characteristic example of "non-sensuous" mysticism. He explains how he was, “caught up to the third heaven — whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows…. [And was] caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat” (2 Cor 12:1-4).
Being unable to describe adequately with words what one has "experienced", is a classic example of ineffability, one of the qualifying signs of a mystical experience.
His lack of awareness as to whether he was "in the body or out of the body" indicates the breakdown of his surface intelligence and a lose of awareness of himself of a distinct "I".
This is confirmed by his famous declaration in Galatians: "
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20).
A later Christian mystic, from the Syrian Orthodox Church, had the exact same experience (and I use his as my signature quote):
"...The ground on which I have been proceeding has been altered before me. My intelligence has been astonished by the marvel which You provoke and henceforth I know myself as not existing...My soul from then on was remaining as if in annihilation but without passing away. Friends were blotted out of my heart, unloved as enemies from of old. When I became weak, for a time He left me like this, amazed at Him and what is His. From that time I was existing without mind as non-existing, without perception, without vision, and without hearing, but in amazement and great stillness. There is no movement or knowledge there since in the experienced one knowledge has forgotten itself and even how to know...[The soul] is supremely illumined again and penetrates into the holy and greatly resplendent light. It gets absorbed in the glory of vision and is amazed. [Then] everything is lifted from its sight as being non-existent, and [the soul] forgets itself, being united to the light of the glory of the Majesty. It is captivated by its beauty and sees the glorious Hypostases [of the Trinity] through knowledge, that is, through unknowing, which is higher than all knowledge and all those who know..."
- Saint John of Dalyatha (8th century), Letter 4,16; Discourse 8
John of Dalyatha in one of his letters refers too, "
Paul, the philosopher of the Spirit" as his inspiration.
If I practise "Paulism" according to you, then I am happy to declare myself a proud Paulite. I daresay that I must be in very good company.
Loud and proud, because as he said "
I live no longer I, but Christ lives in me". May we all be blessed to reach such a state of freedom from selfish desire and humility.
